The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of Calibrachoa plant originated from crossing a Calibrachoa hybrid variety called ‘9PP11’, as the female parent, and ‘9CPP8’, as the male parent.
The Calibrachoa is a popular plant that is used for flower bedding and potting in the summer season. There are only a few Calibrachoa varieties known to the inventor, such as ‘Sunberubu’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 9,754), ‘Sunbelchipi’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 10,355) and ‘Sunbelki’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 11,558), which are spreading, and have a medium plant height, with abundant branches and a high resistance to heat, rain and disease. There are even fewer varieties that have a great profusion of flowers, a strong purplish pink color, and high resistance to rain, heat, and disease known to the inventors. Accordingly, the invention was aimed at obtaining a new Calibrachoa variety having strong purplish pink and very small flowers, combined with the above features.
The female parent ‘9PP11’ (unpatented) used in the crossing of ‘Sunbelpapi’ is a strain of our breeding lines grown at Yokaichi-shi, Shiga-ken, Japan, having an outwardly spreading growth habit with abundant branching. It has small single flowers, the petals having a vivid reddish purple color. The flowers of ‘9PP11’ are smaller in size than the flowers of ‘Sunbelpapi’.
The male parent ‘9CPP8’ (unpatented) used in the crossing of ‘Sunbelpapi’ is a strain of our breeding lines grown at Yokaichi-shi, Shiga-ken, Japan, having a decumbent growth habit with abundant branching. It has small single flowers, the petals having a vivid reddish purple color. The growth habit of the male parent, ‘9CPP8’, is decumbent. In contrast, the growth habit of ‘Sunbelpapi’ is outwardly spreading.
In April 1998, crossing of ‘9PP11’ as the female parent and ‘9CPP8’ as the male parent was conducted at Yokaichi-shi, Shiga-ken, Japan. In September 1998, 50 seedlings were obtained from that crossing. One seedling was selected in view of its growth habit, flower size and color in October 1999. That seedling was propagated by cutting, and the cuttings were grown in field and evaluated from April to September 2000. A trial was carried out by flower potting in the greenhouse and field from April to October 2001 at Yokaichi-shi, Shiga-ken, Japan. The botanical characteristics of that plant were then examined, using similar varieties ‘Sunbelchipi’ (unpatented) and ‘Sunbelkupapi’ (unpatented) for comparison. As a result, it was concluded that this Calibrachoa plant is distinguishable from any other variety whose existence is known to us, and is uniform and stable in its characteristics. Then the new variety of Calibrachoa plant was named ‘Sunbelpapi’.
In the following description, the color-coding is in accordance with The R.H.S. Colour Chart.